Events

To what extent can we use a high-resolution comparative linguistics approach to open a window into human history when we lack tangible historical information? The Guaporé-Mamoré region, overlapping significant territory in the Bolivian and Brazilian lowlands, is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions in the continent. In spite of that, we know extremely little about the history of a vast majority of the languages, and the indigenous nations who speak them, before the 20th century. In this talk I will discuss my ongoing research examining grammatical properties in order to triangulate historical information about the nations inhabiting of this area.

Jointly organised with BantUGent. To join the meeting online via MS teams, please contact Nina van der Vlugt.

This contribution reports on a recent field mission carried out in the Ubangi River Basin (Central African Republic). Work focused on 31 varieties belonging to the Bantu, Ubangi, and Central Sudanic subfamilies of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. The primary objective was to document implosive and labial-velar consonants. To this end, acoustic, electroglottographic, and aerodynamic (pneumotachographic) data were collected. In the context of this presentation: I will present a detailed report on activities within the framework of this mission; I will illustrate the quality and typology of the data and exemplify the usefulness of integrated phonetic research with instances from Central Sudanic Bagiro; I will present a few general remarks on the merit of instrumental data collection for phonetic typology and phonological theory. The hope is that this will serve as a handy reference for fellow researchers interested in instrumental work in the field.